


Galatea

by shadowgamed (humanyubel)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Artificial Intelligence, Dark Side of Dimensions, First Kiss, First Love, Gen, Inspired by Pygmalion and Galatea (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), M/M, Moral Dilemmas, Pining, Pre-Dark Side of Dimensions, Random & Short, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-14 13:10:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20601335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/humanyubel/pseuds/shadowgamed
Summary: He is born of memories and footage and a tragic series ofalmosts. He is an after image, an echo of what once was.His creator grieves in the only way a heartbroken man can.





	Galatea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nsfwnoses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nsfwnoses/gifts).

> short thing written for @nsfwnoses on twitter.

The first time is impossible by all standards and definitions of the word.

He blinks amethyst eyes open, brow furrowed in confusion. He peers around the lab not with panic but instead a deep-seated curiosity. 

Several men and women in Kaiba Corp labcoats openly gawk at him. He pays their rudeness no mind as his gaze lands on a tall brunet in the most extravagant white coat he's ever seen. 

_ Kaiba Seto  _ his mind automatically supplies and then it all comes back. This man was his rival. Death-T, Duelist Kingdom, and Battle City... mere fragments and only bits involving this man and Yugi. His partner. 

He looks down at his immaculate hands. Short and slender. The hands of an experienced card player.

"Kaiba?" he calls out, quirking a brow at the younger man. 

That's all it takes to have Kaiba send everyone out of the room, voice low and his haunting blue gaze never once leaving him.

Him? He was the other Yugi. Or better put, the  _ other _ other Yugi. 

The scientists hastily comply and he and Kaiba are left alone in the lab that feels all too big.

"State your purpose and objective." Kaiba orders and like magic his mouth opens to obey.

"Artificial Intelligence for the duelist known as 'Other Yugi'. Primary objective, 'duel Kaiba Seto'." He blinks at himself, surprise flickering in his wide amethyst eyes. And then it clicks. The last variable to the equation.

He is fabricated. And these memories are not his own. His are the other’s “other”. 

The thought is both disappointing and confusing. He resigns himself to stew in these emotions. And that's okay. They're simply a facsimile of the real thing so he's harming no one at the end of the day. 

He takes Kaiba’s hand into his, every “nerve” fizzling at the contact. 

Kaiba allows it, observing the simple connection carefully. 

“Completely solid.” he carefully laces their fingers together when no protest comes from Kaiba. Relishing in the simple act.

Kaiba laughs, just on this side of unhinged. His icy blue eyes are filled with infinite glee. 

“Incredible!” Kaiba says more to himself than to anyone else. His neural link flashes blue at his temple. Distracting.

“Who am I to you?” Kaiba inquires. 

He looks up at Kaiba, amethyst eyes smouldering.

“You are my fated rival. You are the man I admire above everyone else.”

Kaiba stares at him, eyes wide and expression heart-wrenchingly vulnerable. His lower lip wobbles before he composes himself. Mouth twisted into a snarl.

“Yugi! I will surely defeat you the next time our paths intertwine!” 

He shoots Kaiba a charming smirk. 

“I await our battle with baited breath, Kaiba.” 

And then he lifts Kaiba’s pale hand to his lips in the briefest of kisses.

The last thing he sees before he fades is Kaiba’s bright red face and panicked eyes. 

* * *

His first trial of life had been a sound failure. But Kaiba Seto was a stubborn man. 

This time Kaiba doesn’t come within ten feet of him and his gaggle of scientists watch from behind the safety of a reinforced glass wall. 

“Are your thoughts always this loud?” he asks, shuffling through the deck placed in front of him. 

Fingers lingering over the Black Magician card before settling on the Blue Eyes White Dragon. Gazing upon her face with a soft kind of wonder.

Every part of him screamed to take the Black Magician back, but he was drawn to Kaiba’s treasured companion.

“You aren’t God, Kaiba.” he calls out over his shoulder. 

He flickers away into nothingness a second time, Blue Eyes card fluttering down onto the sterile table.

* * *

The third time must be a fluke. 

They are alone in the lab together, minimal lights allowing either of them to see more than five feet in front of the. He’s only awake for a moment… Just a moment.

Kaiba’s sleep heavy eyes observing him, unable to bring himself to blink.

Everytime, no matter how short, he appears before Kaiba leaves him feeling too much.

The Neural link flickers with the rise and fall of Kaiba’s emotions. And he can’t even begin to parse the emotions Kaiba transmits. They mirror his own.

Briefly he wonders how someone could be so cruel to create a non living being and allow for it to experience such an array of emotions.

“Kaiba.” he says.

Kaiba blinks, a haunted look falling over his pale face.

Of course it’s only right for a man with so many lingering ghosts to look that way. 

But it pains him to see that expression on Kaiba. 

No- he wants to see Kaiba with a pleasant look about him. He racks his “brain” for any borrowed memory that suits him. 

But nothing comes to mind. 

How would Kaiba appear with a soft blush and even softer smile? He would be beautiful, he knows this. But he cannot imagine it.

And just as soon as he’s there, he’s gone again.

* * *

The fourth time he returns, he knows, will be his last. So he makes of it what he can.

A new duel disc is strapped to his arm, cards loaded. It’s the other Yugi’s deck, and it’s like a second skin that’s far too snug.

They duel and he loses. Because while he is built from what remained of the other Yugi- he ultimately isn’t him. The machinations of that man’s mind far too complex even for Kaiba’s advanced technology.

And it leaves Kaiba wanting. 

He’s disappointed Kaiba one too many times. He will be discarded because Kaiba will never allow himself to be abandoned (never again). And he will walk away from any and all who fail to measure up to his standards.

“Good game.” he praises, stepping closer to Kaiba.

“What’s your angle?” Kaiba takes a faltering step back.

“What can I say? You are the man I adore. No more, no less than that.”

Kaiba shakes his head, eyes furious. The remote to terminate the solid vision program had been carelessly discarded behind the glass observation wall. 

“Stop that!”

“What will you do? Hit me?” he asks taking another step closer. 

Kaiba’s back hits the wall as he takes another step closer to the taller man.

“Stop this nonsense at once!”

Of course Kaiba wouldn’t hurt him even if it was purely visuals. 

He’d been lovingly, painstakingly crafted. Molded from the ephemeral space between feelings.

Kaiba would never strike out against him for fear tainting his own memories of the man he’d been modeled after.

All things die and all things lose their beauty except he could not die, having truly never lived, and Kaiba’s beauty was unceasing and breathtaking. 

He stops a mere few inches away from Kaiba. Kaiba’s breath comes out erratically. The beginnings of a panic attack, though he’s never seen Kaiba have one before. He won’t allow that fact to change.

“Kaiba, why are you afraid of me?”

“I’m not afraid of anything. Your behavior… isn’t right.”

“My feelings for you are the only thing “right” about me.” he says, taking Kaiba’s shaking hands into his own. He can’t feel anything. He’s nothing more than an echo chamber for sensations. He knows Kaiba is clammy and ice cold but he does not know this for any effort in deciphering the feeling for himself.

“Are you afraid to be treated gently? Precious things should be handled with care.” 

“Care? What do you know about care?” Kaiba tears himself free of his hold. Sidestepping him and looping back to the glass observation room. His movements naked of any disguise. He’s panicked as a small rabbit before a starving wolf. 

He tilts his head curiously to the side.

“I know plenty about caring. I was created in his image after all.”

“What are you talking about? Start making sense for a change.” Kaiba says, putting even more distance between them.

“Oh Kaiba…” he coos, crossing his arms over his chest. “Is love truly blind?”

He frees an arm to smooth through his hair. Carefully styled for all of eternity. No man truly blind to his love would recreate the object of their affections so delicately.

But he wasn’t right. No. This form was simply a fuzzy form of a man long dead who never had a body of his own alongside Kaiba. 

He is an amalgamation of parts and feelings that aren’t anyone, but are everything in Kaiba’s tormented mind. Because they are all he has left to grasp onto.

Kaiba’s back hits the door to the observation room.

“Love?” Kaiba echoes numbly. His fingers enter the passcode without sparing the keypad a glance.

“Kaiba, the man that resides restless in your heart and me… We aren’t the same person. He is the path stretching forward and I am the path cutting off to the side, off the forged trail.” He strokes sweaty brown bangs out of Kaiba’s ashen face.

He’s frozen in a state between shock and anticipation. Kaiba would never fail to see something through. No matter how painful.

“You’re so busy chasing ghosts... The afterlife is out there, somewhere. Maybe not so much unlike the state of nothing you force me into when you grow uncomfortable. Why must you play your silly games, Kaiba? Do you think yourself to be God?” he smiles warmly at the man before him. 

“You fight for control over every aspect of your life, but all you really want, deep down… is to allow someone else control. To let go and simply  _ be _ .”

Standing up on his tip toes he tilts Kaiba’s chin down with his thumb and index finger. 

“The earth is not a graveyard. Why must your body be his coffin?” his tongue flicks out over his lower lip for no reason other than a sort of advanced muscle memory.

It was a tick the other Yugi had in his time roaming the Earth. What a useless movement for him, but it catches Kaiba’s attention. 

Kaiba stares at his lower lip, transfixed by what he sees. Out of curiosity, he repeats the movement. 

  
  


He thinks in a rush, _ maybe I was born for this _ . Everything in his short existence leading up to the gentle contact between him and Kaiba. Kaiba settles a hand on his hip, fingers hesitantly curling into his tank top.

He feels as if he could fall apart in a burst of pure nothing. Return to whence he came, no regret in sight.

“Thank you for letting me love you, Kaiba Seto. My beloved rival.” he slides his hand over the door and the door finally slides open.

Kaiba surged against him, pressing a clumsy, tactless kiss to his mouth.

But Kaiba would not allow it. No, he will leave this world as he entered it by Kaiba’s hand. Only fading memories in the man’s head proof he existed. But exist he did. 

Fate works in the strangest of ways, cursed by Venus in life and death he would bear it with a grin.

Now that he was close enough, Kaiba only pulled him closer. Sobbing brokenly into their kiss. 

He knew there were many things Kaiba would not do. Kissing him back didn’t happen to be one of those things.

To love Kaiba you had to pierce his steely exterior and bury your face into his open heart. Every step of the way was agony, but the journey… the journey was also ecstasy. 

He reluctantly parts after a long minute. Openly drinking in the sight of Kaiba’s eyes squeezed shut, a flush high on his cheeks, lips parted.

He could happily fade away with this being the last thing he sees. He slips his thumb into Kaiba’s mouth, resting it against the cushion of his lower lip.

When Kaiba opens his eyes, his pupils are blown wide. His breathing is ragged. Not like the last time. No, somewhere just beyond himself supplies that this time. It’s excitement. He remembers the other Yugi in a similar state during a duel against Kaiba. Long, long ago. 

Wonders exactly how it feels.

“I will walk backwards into what awaits me.” he whispers, drunk on the idea of Kaiba held so wholly in his grasp.

Kaiba and him stumble into the observation room, the automatic door sliding close behind him.

In another life he would not exist. He would be the other Yugi and he would not be a fool, squandering his time. 

He remembers nightmarish visions from Kaiba’s neural link.

The other Yugi’s back fading into a cold, white light. Sick twisted sacrifices. Mutou Yugi a snake in the grass striking Kaiba’s beloved-  _ Atem _ from behind. 

Gruesome death after death. Never once sparing a backwards glance. 

The worst of them all was Atem falling to his knees and lying down like a dog. Slipping into eternal rest as he sunk into a deep pit of sand. 

“My feelings aren’t fair.” Kaiba whispers darkly.

“Life isn’t fair, Kaiba. I don’t regret a second of it.” No, an imitation of life had been gifted to him. And he would part from Kaiba, leaving behind something the other Yugi had not known to give him.

Another flash from the neural link. This time much more brief than before.

A young Kaiba and Mokuba tossed onto the curb in front of an orphanage. Abandoned. When had he last been treated as he should be? Long before the orphanage. And not since then.

The other Yugi had been a fool, so clearly loving Kaiba as much- if not more than he did. Does.

Kaiba collides into a steel work bench and he continues on. 

He reaches behind Kaiba to take the remote into his hand. Presents it to Kaiba as if it’s a wedding ring. Kneeling on the floor in front of him with a flourish.

Kaiba holds the remote close to his heart. Shoulders trembling.

“I won’t stop until I’ve reached him. No matter the means. No matter the price.” Kaiba tells him, words slow and measured.

“You would not be you if you gave up.” He assures the taller man.

Kaiba’s eyes never once leave his as he presses the button to end the program. 

“Goodbye. I will miss you. Thank you, Kaiba.”

As he flickers out of existence, Kaiba drops the remote and grinds his heel into it.

When he’s done he deletes all the necessary data. 

  
  


_ Kaiba never does return to that failed project. Redoubling his efforts on the supernatural. If technology had failed him, then perhaps magic would yield a favorable outcome. _

_ At night he does not lay in bed, eyes aching, mind racing as sleep evades him. He does not wonder if he had created an inferior version of Atem who would love him. Does not wonder if his feelings had corrupted his infallible image of Atem from the get go.  _

_ Had he created the AI with the fatal design flaw of loving him? Or had he failed with his Neural link? _

_ Would he ever know? _

_ No. He would never know because he never wondered.  _

_ The feeling of amethyst eyes watching him so closely, a quiet intensity to them, wasn’t a feeling etched deep inside of him. Hollowing him out in the worst way. _

_ A face that was neither Atem nor Yugi, but an image lingering in his head.  _

_ No one but him would remember the feeling of solid vision against his lips. The touch of holographic fingers in his hair, hands laced together, a teasing thumb seeking entrance into his mouth. _

_ No one would know of his moment of weakness.  _

_ And it would stay that way, from now until forever. Locked away in a box inside his heart. _

_ Kaiba Seto was a selfish man. _

**Author's Note:**

> My job to put you to sleep  
Slip into your breathing on the cusp of a dream  
All lives are mysteries  
And when we close our eyes we write them
> 
> Baby baby baby why don't you come back to me  
I'll punch the numbers once and, feeling blunt, I'll give up  
Consider all the foolishness in fooling around  
Consider how our kisses made a quiet sound and delayed you
> 
> Slow vines keep on climbing,  
Sticking to the brick and licking concrete's pits  
A wave's favorite game is timing  
When you're lost in it you can never be late  
When you lose your breath all your plans are a waste
> 
> Baby baby baby could we do it again  
I've yet to get how bodies could be a best friend  
Relying on the selfishness of just-pleasing-me  
Relying on the past will never make you free just delay you
> 
> Baby baby baby why don't you come back to me  
I'll punch the numbers once and, feeling blunt, I'll give up  
Consider all the foolishness in fooling around  
Consider how our kisses made a quiet sound and delayed you
> 
> \- Gregory and the Hawk, Slow Vines


End file.
